While Facebook already announced that it would block political ads in the week before the U.S. elections, there were speculations that politicians could run new ones starting on November 4 right after the polls. Today, Facebook confirmed that it will reject ads claiming victory for either the Trump or Biden camp ahead of the official results.
Andy Stone, Facebook's communications representative, tweeted today that the company will ban this type of ads from running on the platform. Apparently, the goal is to prevent misleading information from flooding the social networking site.
Facebook will be rejecting political ads that claim victory before the results of the 2020 election have been declared.
— Andy Stone (@andymstone) September 23, 2020
CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said the steps his company was taking would "encourage voting, connect people with authoritative information, and fight misinformation". He also noted that Facebook saw 24 million clicks to voter registration websites that it showed to users in the last three days.
Fast Company noted that official election results may face announcement delays due to mail-in voting, unlike in normal conditions when the winner would be announced by midnight. Stone's confirmation reiterates the company's efforts to "protect" the U.S. elections from meddling through misinformation campaigns.
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